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An anonymous reader writes "Amazon has been named the most reputable company in the US this year (up from 21st place last year), according to the sixth annual list of the 150 Most Reputable Companies from advisory firm Reputation Institute (RI), in partnership with Forbes Media. The list is based on RI's US RepTrak Pulse Study, which measures trust, esteem, admiration, and good feelings consumers have towards the largest 150 companies based on revenue in the US. The ratings are analyzed from nearly 33,000 online consumer responses taken in January and February."

At some point, we have to figure out how e-tailers can and should responsibly collect sales taxes. Amazon could be helping that process, instead of fighting it tooth and nail.

One of Amazon's advantages is that they don't require sales taxes, which can often result in the product costing less even with shipping charges. Once they are required to collect sales taxes they'll lose that price advantage and will likely lose sales because of it. It is not in their corporate interest to 'help' in the process.

Being "reputable" means not always placing your profit interests first and foremost. Besides, if they actively negotiate with these states they may find a solution acceptable to those states, that actually does not sting as bad as expected. And, anyways, many other e-tailers collect those taxes and still manage to prosper.

One of Amazon's advantages is that they don't require sales taxes, which can often result in the product costing less even with shipping charges. Once they are required to collect sales taxes they'll lose that price advantage and will likely lose sales because of it. It is not in their corporate interest to 'help' in the process.

I've about had it with companies this big looking to get out of paying taxes. We've got a congress that wants to cut a supplemental nutrition program for infants and pregnant women in poverty so Amazon can skip out on taxes, pay lobbyists and provide unfair competition to mom and pop bookstores.

I say fuck 'em. I've got no problem paying taxes and I've got no problem paying the stiff sales tax we've got here in Chicago. They like to use the nice internet the government made for them but they don't want to give anything back. Meanwhile, Borders is closing stores and the little bookstores where I shop can't even make ends meet.

WikiLeaks "doesn't own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content,"

This is clearly targeted at copyright infringers. Any content written by a US government employee in the course of their job is public domain.

Amazon's terms of service also require that content "will not cause injury to any person or entity." Yet he said "it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren't putting innocent people in jeopardy."

Wikileaks has not release 250,000 cables. Today, after four months of redacting and releasing documents Wikileaks has released a grand total of 6,321 documents.

You have got to be pretty gullible to believe government pressure had nothing to do with Amazon's decision.